Novel Control Approaches for Demand Response With Real-Time Pricing Using Parallel and Distributed Consensus-Based ADMM

Abstract

This paper studies the automated demand response (DR) problem in smart grids equipped with information and communication technology networks, where power generating and consuming units can exchange information as a multiagent system (MAS), and a real-time pricing (RTP) scheme is proposed. When the communication graph among agents is connected, a novel parallel and distributed consensus-based algorithm is proposed to derive an RTP scheme to facilitate DR, and when communication uncertainties exist, a robust consensus algorithm is proposed to cease the effect of uncertainties. Next, this paper proposes a novel control mechanism to tackle the problem of disconnected communication among agents, e.g., under cyber-attacks, by employing the so-called mixed communication-broadcast control architecture where the underlying ideas are twofold. First, each area in the grid associated with a connected subgraph is controlled by a MAS to guarantee the power balance and to reach consensus on the local electric price for that area. Second, a supervisory unit observes those local electric prices to calculate the global electric price for the whole grid and then broadcasts to all units so that they can properly adjust their output powers. Simulations are carried out on the IEEE 39-bus system to validate the proposed control mechanisms.